Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: blessings, Christmas, cynicism, ex-husband, gifts, holidays, homeless, kids, retailers
Oops, that was supposed to say Santa’s Little Helper but that underlying subconscious of mine made a mistake….or did it?
I like to take the Christmas season to reflect on what I’m so blessed to have: my children, my fabulous husband, my great career, amazing friends, deep faith……the list goes on and on. To say that I have more than I deserve is an understatement.
So maybe it goes without saying that there is little that I “need” or really “want” for Christmas. Actually peace on Earth, feeding the hungry, and clothing the poor sounds like a nice gift idea. I think it’s possible that having reached a certain age I’m just not that into Christmas gift giving anymore and I don’t know anyone that wouldn’t agree that Christmas is over commercialized and exploited to benefit retailers.
Now that my kids are getting older it just seems like Christmas cheer is losing it’s luster, but I digress most likely due to the fact that I have kids….teenagers. They still want toys at this age, but their toys now consist of high priced technology, expensive sporting goods and designer clothes. Gone are the days of legos, Barbies, books and generally affordable low ticket items that when purchased in bulk could take all of Christmas morning to open! I could buy 10 toys then with the money that I now spend on only one video game or designer jacket. Of course there is a positive in the fact that gift giving now only takes a few short minutes compared to all morning.
Maybe my cynicism with the holidays stems from the year that I unwillingly received a “gift” from DA. It was the first Christmas after our divorce was finalized and I was already in a great new relationship with MFH. The box was presented to me by my unsuspecting children who announced “Daddy got you a present mommy….isn’t that nice?” Eyebrows raised, M(future)FH and I exchanged a knowing look as I explained to the kids that mommy and daddy shouldn’t be exchanging gifts anymore, that it was inappropriate now that we were divorced and as nice as the gesture was I was going to donate the gift by placing it under an “angel tree”. With the distraction of their own presents to open they put the gift out of their minds and moved on to the next item. It wasn’t until later that night that MFH and I opened the box in private, only to discover that the uneasy feeling I had about the boxes contents were accurate. Please keep in mind that DA does not possess super human intelligence, or perhaps any kind of intelligence at all but I have to admit that when I pulled out the large sized night shirt with “Ho-Ho-Ho” written across the front that the message was received loud and clear.
That shirt left my house as fast as it arrived, and it went directly to the homeless shelter. It gives me a warm feeling to know that some very large homeless man or woman may be wearing that shirt as I type this. Albeit that happened 5 years ago but does holiday-wear ever really go out of style? I think not, and it lasts longer as it only comes out for a short season.
Either way it feels good to know that something positive came from DA’s crappy gesture. And now when I see a homeless person, I think of DA.
Merry Christmas!
So ho ho funny.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: children, co-parent, community, divorce, kids, shared custody, weird
When I was a kid and my parents got divorced, they went in different directions, literally. I moved with my father overseas and my mother moved to the Seattle area. It would appear that they couldn’t get further away from one another. Once my dad and I came back to the states I went to live with my mother and my dad was still a state away. We NEVER lived in the same town so there was always traveling involved whenever I went to visit the other parent. Throughout my teen years I ended up at 2 different middle schools and 4 high schools. this was mainly due to switching households and/or my dad being transferred with his company.
The idea of moving never really bothered me and frankly I got used to leaving friends behind and starting a new life somewhere else. I’m not certain that I really appreciated it much then but it made me the person that I am today: confident, friendly and self-assured.
Although I can honestly say that I’m thankful for moving so often, I also envied the friends that I made along the way that had grown up in the same community and had the same friends since they were in Kindergarten. Although they often let me into their exclusive group or clique, I was always the outsider and secretly wished that I had been there since early childhood as well. It was due to this longing that I vowed to raise my children that way; staying within one community and helping them create life-long friends.
I’ve been pretty successful in this endeavour. It’s been amazing to watch my kids AND their friends grow up together, share sports, school, first boy/girl friends, driving (God help us all).
So, when I got divorced and then remarried and stayed within my community (for the sake of my kids) I was happy. What was a little harder to get over was the fact that DA also decided to stay within the same community. Actually, when my friends started going through their divorces (which became an epidemic about 3-6 years ago) I noticed that they ALL stayed within the same community as well. And not just one party, both of them. Ex-husbands and ex-wives living in separate homes but in the same town…..why would they chose this?
Not including my situation, I have 3 other close friends that also share this arrangement and I know of countless others. It’s weird, plain and simple.
Yesterday I had tea with a friend and we were discussing this odd phenomenom….odd in the sense that when we were growing up it just didn’t work that way. Parents divorced and someone always moved away. Could it be because the term “dead-beat dad/mom” carries such a stigma (as it should), is it due to the new rules regarding co-parenting and joint-custody (and whoever came up with that idea ought to have their head examined. If you couldn’t make it work while you were married what makes anyone think that they can do it divorced????), or could it simply be that both parties have peed all over town to mark their territory and both are too stubborn to give up their claim of belonging there??
I’m no longer buying into the theory that “it’s in the children’s best interest”. Let’s call it what it is, bullshit. Kids are being tossed between households with different morals and values, often with a 60/40 or 50/50 split of time with each parent. How can this possibly be good for the kids? It’s damn confusing is what it is; no wonder ADD is such a common occurrence. I long for “the good old days” when fathers or mothers moved away, allowing some semblance of stability for the children and affording a new life for each other as X’s. “Disneyland” dads were such because they didn’t get to see the kids very often and when they did they treated them like gold and spoiled them rotten (thus pissing off mom when the kids returned home).
So what really is in “the children’s best interest”? Who’s to say? The courts, child psychologists, lawyers…..ha! Who knows. Like with everything else supposedly each generation wants “more” for the next generation but how do we know that this is “in the best interest of the children”? How can it be when each parent is out of their mind because their ex-spouse lives just around the corner and the loathing toward one another is so prevalent and obvious? I don’t have the answers, I just think it’s weird!
